Sitting Out the Culture War--September 21, 2022

Sitting Out the Culture War--September 21, 2022

"For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might gain more of them. To the Judeans I became as a Judean, in order to gain Judeans. To those under the law I became as one under the law [though I myself am not under the law] so that I might gain those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law [though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law] so that I might gain those outside the law.  To the weak I became weak, so that I might gain the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some." [1 Corinthians 9:19-22]

The Good News is that God meets us, accepts us, and claims us, right where we are.  That much is Christianity 101-level stuff, I hope.  But to carry that thought just a bit further, it only makes sense, then, that if we are going to tell that Good News to other people, we'll also need to meet them, accept them, and claim them--you guessed it--right where they are.

That's really the heart of what Paul is saying here, too.  It's not that he's been selling out or chasing after fads to try and sound "trendy" in his preaching or dress.  Nor does he pretend to be something he's not.  This, by the way, is a mistake an awful lot of churches seem hell-bent on making these days--in the name of trying to "be all things to all people like Paul did" we end up pathetically and poorly copying the moves of pop culture in the hopes of making ourselves loo "relevant," but end up losing our authentic voice and witness.  That's not what Paul does.

No, for Paul, it's not about trying to be "cool" in the eyes of whoever is around.  Rather, it's a refusal to get sucked into a "culture war" mentality [which, by the way, is another mistake that an awful lot of churches seem hell-bent on making, too].  Paul doesn't assume that there's only one "way" or "approach" or "culture" or even "worldview" demanded by the Gospel, but rather that just like Christ himself, the Good News comes to us where we are, as we are.  And that gives him immense freedom, then, to connect with people at the points of commonality he can find with people where they are, in whatever culture they come from.  So, to people steeped in the language, traditions, laws, and culture of Judaism and the story of ancient Israel, Paul can keep eating kosher and using rabbinical style rhetoric to speak about Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel.  And to people who have no background in Judaism, Paul can just as easily eat whatever food happens to be around, even if it's a ham-and-cheese sandwich, and speak of the Savior of the whole world who has rescued us apart from our ability to keep commandments.  

And notice, not only does Paul think it's okay for him to lean into those different cultural connecting points with other people, but he has no problem with letting other people continue to hold to the cultural backgrounds they know.  There is no bait-and-switch.  There is no lecture that "You're doing it wrong--now, unlearn your old culture so I can give you the right one."  There is, rather, the hope that by meeting people where they are and loving people where they are, Paul can get through to people that God in Christ already meets them where they are and loves them where they are, too.  The Gospel gains credibility when the message we bring ABOUT unconditional love can be communicated THROUGH unconditional love.

That's something we could stand to learn from Paul in this day and age.  All too often, church folks cast themselves as the Guardians of Respectable Religion, and with it comes a set of additional cultural baggage we sometimes insist has to be a part of Christianity, when it's really just our own quirky set of preferences or traditions.  In my tradition, pastors and other worship leaders often wear fancy white robes and color-coded accessories that are all tied in with a thing called "the church year." But I would be a damned fool if I insisted that Jesus can only communicate to people by pastors wearing the proper vestments.  In other traditions, you're not really "worshiping" unless you've sung the same short, trite refrain fifty-seven times with your hands in the air while acoustic guitars and hand drums play in the background, or when people insert, "O Father God... O Lord Jesus..." in between every other phrase of their prayers.  But let's not kid ourselves that the New Testament requires any of that.  It's really easy to add the cultural baggage of American society to the Gospel, too--to tell people in other countries that they're not "doing Christianity right" unless they have songs on big screens, or sing in English, or have a particular position on the capital gains tax or the midterm elections. My goodness, in a time when people are getting bent out of shape over a casting of "The Little Mermaid" with a Black actress as Ariel, folks can get really upset when someone points out that Jesus wasn't a northern European with long, wavy light-brown hair in a robe like he's so often portrayed in the artwork in our churches.  But it's all the same mistake--confusing "my cultural lens through which I see Jesus" with Jesus himself.

It's so easy to assume that "our form of Christianity" is the ONLY form of Christianity, because, well, we're used to what we know, and we are really good at making ourselves the center of attention.  And from there, it is terribly tempting to label anybody who doesn't share our same cultural baggage as on "the wrong side," or "distorting the faith," or "not true Christians."  Paul's approach offers us an alternative--we do not have to take sides in someone else's culture wars.  We do not have to [nor do we get to] baptize our partisan politics, our national culture, or our denominational traditions as "the Gospel."  None of those are, because none of those is capable of meeting people where they are, and truly loving them where they are.  But that's exactly what the Good News says and does, because that's exactly what Jesus has done for us.  Paul's approach just puts human skin on it--he embodies the way the Gospel meets us where we're at.

It can be hard for us to take a spiritual scalpel to our piety and see where we've gotten "the good news of Jesus" conflated with "our particular cultural habits and hang-ups."  But that's the kind of work that Paul calls us to, because it's the way to make our witness authentic.  

The only way people can dare to believe the news of a God whose love meets us where we are... is for us to put our money where our mouths are and to love people where they are, too.

Lord God, enable us to love people as you have loved us, and to speak your good news to others with the same gracious acceptance you have first shown us.